Show simple item record

dc.contributor.authorGobby, Brad
dc.date.accessioned2017-01-30T15:10:23Z
dc.date.available2017-01-30T15:10:23Z
dc.date.created2015-10-29T04:09:04Z
dc.date.issued2015
dc.identifier.citationGobby, B. 2015. Obliged to calculate: My School, markets, and equipping parents for calculativeness. Journal of Education Policy. 31 (4): pp. 421-431.
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/43830
dc.identifier.doi10.1080/02680939.2015.1083124
dc.description.abstract

This paper argues neoliberal programs of government in education are equipping parents for calculativeness. Regimes of testing and the publication of these results and other organizational data are contributing to a public economy of numbers that increasingly oblige citizens to calculate. Using the notions of calculative and market devices, this paper examines the Australian Government’s My School website, which publishes academic and organizational information about schools, including national test results. While it is often assumed that such performance technologies contribute to neoliberal reform of education through school choice, the paper argues the website is technically limited in its capacity to facilitate the economic calculations and calculated action of parents resulting in school choice. The paper instead opens My School to analysis as a technique of governmental self-formation. Using the theoretical resources of actor-network theory and Foucauldian scholarship, this paper complicates assumptions in the literature about the extent to which My School actually operates as a ‘market mechanism’. It argues My School attempts to cultivate a calculated form of parental educational agency, irreducible to economic market agency.

dc.titleObliged to calculate: My School, markets, and equipping parents for calculativeness
dc.typeJournal Article
dcterms.source.issn0268-0939
dcterms.source.titleJournal of Education Policy
curtin.note

This is an Author's Original Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Education Policy on 07/09/2015, available online at <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/02680939.2015.1083124">http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/02680939.2015.1083124</a>

curtin.departmentSchool of Education
curtin.accessStatusOpen access


Files in this item

Thumbnail

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Show simple item record